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Simeral, John

John Simeral

Assistant Professor of Engineering (Research)

Overview

Dr. Simeral is a Assistant Professor of Engineering (Research) at Brown University, a Research Biomedical Engineer with the Department of Veterans Affairs Rehabilitation R&D Service, and leader of the focus area Restoring Communication and Mobility in the VA Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology. His research is dedicated to integrating neuroscience and engineering disciplines to create unprecedented neural prosthetic technologies to enable communication and control of assistive devices by individuals with paralysis or locked-in syndrome resulting from spinal cord injury, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), stoke and other neurological disorders. He directs development of the system architecture, hardware and software for the BrainGate Neural Interface System (in clinical trial, IDE) that decodes intracortical brain signals into commands to control computer cursors, dexterous prosthetic robotic arms and hands, and other assistive technologies. In addition to research expertise in the neurophysiological basis of movement, Dr. Simeral has a decade of industry engineering experience including the design of massively parallel computer systems and high performance microelectronic VLSI microprocessors.

Research

Research Overview

Our research focuses on understanding how the brain controls movement and on developing brain-machine interfaces to enable individuals with paralysis, upper limb amputation or locked-in syndrome to communicate and control assistive technologies. Integrating expertise in neuroscience, computer science, robotics and engineering, we are developing algorithms and computing platforms that translate brain signals into device commands with the aim of deploying mobile wireless neural prosthetic systems.

Martin Research Prize for Excellence in Basic Research, 2012, by Massachusetts General Hospital for “Reach and grasp by people with tetraplegia using a neurally-controlled robotic arm,” Nature, 2012.

Journal of Neural Engineering "Most cited publication for 2010-2011" for Simeral et al. (2011) "Neural control of cursor trajectory and click by a human with tetraplegia 1000 days after implant of an intracortical microelectrode array".

"Highlights of 2011" award by Journal of Neural Engineering for Simeral et al. (2011) publication "Neural control of cursor trajectory and click by a human with tetraplegia 1000 days after implant of an intracortical microelectrode array", based on 'the highest praise from our international referees and the highest number of downloads.